Zendaya will officially be returning as Rue Bennett in Euphoria season 3. The hit teen HBO show was created by Sam Levinson in 2019, adapted from the Israeli miniseries אופוריה, which translates to the same name. Euphoria season 2 is currently airing, with the finale slated for February 27, 2022. The second season has been an even bigger hit than the first, spawning new memes and conversations on social media with every new episode. Naturally, two weeks ago HBO renewed Euphoria season 3, after airing only 4 episodes.
Euphoria follows the lives and loves of a wide ensemble of teen characters as they explore the darker side of high school. The cast includes new sensations Storm Reid, Sydney Sweeney, Alexa Demie, Maude Apatow, Algee Smith, Jacob Elordi, Barbie Ferreira, Angus Cloud, and Hunter Schafer. However, the series is more or less led by Rue Bennett, the complicated character played by Zendaya, who has also achieved huge success in film as well. In 2021 alone, Zendaya starred in the epic sci-fi adaptation Dune and the box office megahit Spider-Man: No Way Home, both of which were just nominated for Oscars.
TVLine just had a very revealing conversation with the Chief Content Officer of HBO Casey Bloys about the future of the show. Bloys officially announced that Zendaya is "going to be in Season 3," but also discussed the show's potential future. With Zendaya splitting her time between television and film, there's a chance she may wish to exit the show. If it comes to that, Bloys says "it’s hard to imagine doing [the] show without her, But, again, that would be something [for] her and Sam [Levinson] to discuss."
Bloys' answer is a soft one, which is typical of an executive with a hit show on their hands. It's only natural that HBO would want Zendaya to stay on the show for as long as possible, but they need to be prepared for the eventuality that she will leave. Although they also don't want to run the show so long that they have full-grown adults playing teenagers, they have built a stable of new stars around Zendaya who might just be able to carry Euphoria on into future seasons without Rue at the center of the constellation.
Euphoria has already managed to weather the storm of the pandemic, which caused a massive delay between the first and second seasons. Although there were two small-scale Euphoria specials that aired in late 2020 and early 2021, the show essentially asked fans to wait over two years for a new season. Although it wasn't clear anyone would come back after such a long wait, they obviously did, proving how robust Euphoria's fan base is and how willing they are to meet the series halfway.
Source: TVLine